Restaurateurs can learn a lot from their customers, from what they think of the food and the prices to the customer service, ambience, and overall value.
And review sites are simply the best way to find out your customers’ thoughts – upfront and with complete honesty.
Sure, it can be hard to read through customer reviews if you’re a restaurant owner. Receiving a negative review can feel like a punch in the gut, especially if you do everything you can to provide the best food and service possible.
Still, finding out what your customers think—the good and the bad—is essential for knowing where your restaurant is excelling and where it needs improvement.
To point you in the right direction, we have listed the top review sites your restaurant should use to receive customer feedback.
It might seem daunting but don’t panic, as we also explain the best method to improve reviews and build your online reputation quickly.
Everyone knows Facebook – it’s the biggest social media platform on the internet. But if you’re not a Facebook user, you might not know about Facebook Business Pages.
What’s great about Facebook Business Pages is that it’s ideal for businesses of all sizes.
Once you have a Facebook Business Page set up for your restaurant, you can start interacting with customers, marketing what you offer, and receiving reviews – all of which will bolster your online reach.
Facebook is extremely popular, so it’s one review site your restaurant simply has to establish a presence on. And the best way to do this is by collecting Facebook business reviews.
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is the leading review site in the travel and tourism industry, which includes restaurants and cafés. The website has close to 500-million monthly active users, so it’s one that restaurants shouldn’t ignore.
On TripAdvisor, customers write reviews and rate businesses from 1 to 5 stars. For restaurants, in particular, star ratings are also listed for the food, service, value, and atmosphere.
Where TripAdvisor stands out is how restaurants can be listed under the “Top Restaurants” in a given location. By earning more positive reviews, your business can climb the rankings.
Yelp
Yelp might not be as popular as TripAdvisor or Yelp, but it still gets an average 92-million active users per month. It’s one of the stricter review sites out there, used by customers who tend to be more serious about writing reviews.
For those reasons, Yelp prides itself on having accurate, detailed customer reviews. But while that might sound frightening, this can actually work to a business’s advantage, since Yelp reviews are highly trusted by customers who read reviews.
Due to that, collecting positive Yelp reviews is by far one of the best ways for restaurants to establish a bulletproof online reputation.
Foursquare
Foursquare is used more as an app than a website, but that doesn’t make it any less important as a review site. In fact, Foursquare has over 50-million active monthly users, who use the platform to discover and review businesses of all kinds.
Reviews are also called “tips” on Foursquare. What makes this review site different, however, is how businesses are rated out of 10 . Customer reviews can also be upvoted and downvoted by other Foursquare users.
Foursquare might not be the most popular review site for restaurants, or businesses in general, but it’s one to consider using – especially if you’ve already established a good reputation on Facebook, Yelp, and Google.
OpenTable
OpenTable is a platform used for making online restaurant reservations. Despite that, restaurants that are on it can also receive reviews.
Registered users can write reviews and rate restaurants out of 5 stars, with individual ratings for food, service, ambience, and value.
Like all other restaurant review sites, OpenTable also allows reviewers to post photos of their experience.
It’s not as popular as the review sites listed above, but it is one of the most popular review sites for restaurants specifically. As a result, OpenTable reviews are often more honest and accurate since they are posted by avid diners.
Zomato
Zomato is another review site that, like OpenTable, specifically lists restaurants. It’s based in India but has listings for restaurants worldwide. And alongside avid diners, Zomato is popular among food bloggers.
Zomato uses the standard 5-star rating system. But what’s unique here is that Zomato reviews can be voted as “Helpful”, replied to with comments, and shared as links to send or post to social media.
Zomato has 32-million active monthly users, so it’s another review site that you should consider using – or at least keep an eye on in case your restaurant needs claiming!
Last but not least, Google. We don’t have to tell you how popular Google is; it’s the world’s most popular search engine where businesses of all kinds can be reviewed, rated, ranked, and discovered.
Businesses on Google are listed with their reviews and rating, which makes it all the more important for restaurants to boast a solid reputation on Google.
Google reviews also influence SEO, meaning the more positive reviews you have, the higher your restaurant will rank in Google’s search engine results pages.
Whenever a customer searches for a product, service, or restaurant, there’s a good chance they’re using Google. This makes it vital for any business, small or large, to strive to get more Google reviews.
Why Reviews And What Your Customers Think Matters
Reviews are not just for finding out what your customers think. Potential customers use reviews to decide whether or not they will use a business – specifically, whether or not they can trust a business.
Building an online reputation through customer reviews is about establishing trust and credibility. And the more credible—and, as a result, authoritative—your restaurant is, the more customers you can expect to pull in.
This is why customer reviews are so important. They drive business by establishing trust. So no matter how small or large your business is, your business can never receive enough customer reviews.
Still, you need positive reviews and not negative reviews, and that’s where ReputationStacker provides a solution. It’s a powerful tool that generates real positive reviews using effortless automation, designed to work on all major review sites.
The best part? ReputationStacker’s communication funnel gives you the ability to deal with negative feedback privately, which decreases the chance of you finding out about an unsatisfied customer in a negative public review.
Get more reviews and grow your reputation effortlessly with ReputationStacker.
